With the 2012 election looming, and the state Senate president running for the Big Time Senate, Florida Republicans figure there’s some fixin’ that needs to be done to make sure those pesky young voters and their blogger friends don’t get in the way of good time.

On Thursday, the House State Affairs Committee will take up legislation, HB 1355, drafted by the office of House Speaker Dean Cannon and introduced into committee by Rep. Dennis Baxley, that’s supposed to strengthen Florida’s election laws. In fact, the 128-page bill would undo some of the sensible reforms imposed after the 2000 election debacle and adds a plethora of requirements that would tie the hands of independently elected elections supervisors, disenfranchise voters, dissuade volunteers from engaging in voter registration and discourage many voters’ participation on Election Day.

Among the bill’s onerous requirements:

• A newly married woman wanting to vote on Election Day would no longer be allowed to show elections officials at the polls documentation with her name change to vote on that day. Instead, she would be forced to use a provisional ballot, which likely will mean that vote won’t be counted. In 2008, half the provisional ballots in Florida were thrown out, making it hard to contest.

• Voter-registration groups would have to register all their volunteers and paid staff with the state’s Division of Supervisors of Elections, which would create a database. What’s the purpose? Harassment of volunteers or particular organizations?

• Volunteers, who now can help resolve legal issues for individual voters at the polls, would be restricted because the bill lumps “legal advice” into the definition of solicitation and prohibits it within 100 feet of a voting line.

• Any voter who has moved and shows up at a polling site with evidence of the new address would also be forced to use a provisional ballot even though county elections supervisors now have access to a statewide voter database, created back in 2003, that can easily confirm a voter’s change of name or address. This would potentially disenfranchise thousands of college students.

This bill reeks of partisanship. Why?

One theory: Mr. Cannon wants to limit students’ participation in the voting process — as volunteers and as voters. That may be because his district includes the University of Central Florida, and College Democrats at UCF registered almost 11,000 voters in 2008 when Barack Obama won Florida.

The legislation also potentially would restrict the ability of news media and bloggers to take video or audio of voters at polling places, whether during early voting days or on the final Election Day.

As the ranking Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jeff Clemens, noted, “The language in this elections bill seems to place a presumption of guilt on the voters.”

Indeed, at a time when technology has made voting easier and more transparent, when databases have been established for easy and exact access to voters’ information to combat fraud, this bill sets up obstacles reminiscent of Jim Crow.

This isn’t a new thing. Republicans in New Hampshire are working from the same playbook, and it’s of a piece with Republican attempts to hobble Democratic-leaning unions and to pass stringent voter ID laws to thwart Black and Hispanic would-be voters.

The GOP is a dying party. The only way they can thrive is by voter suppression and disenfranchisement. When the new generation comes in and the old generation dies out, the GOP will be the thing of the past.

Here’s the deal. You go to the county courthouse and see the Registrar of Voters, and register. Then you don’t have to deal with the provisional ballot stuff. Simple, no? Apparently not for many people.

@Steve – I’m disabled, I don’t own a car, nor do I have extra spending money to pay someone to travel the 33 miles to my courthouse. I suppose it’s okay with you if my vote doesn’t count because of my circumstances? I suppose you’d probably like to see us require voters to pay a fee in order to vote, or perhaps make them pass an English literacy test too? How far does the rabbit hole go with you?